Explore the vast range of titles available.

Reforming Urban Laboris a history of the nineteenth-century social reforms designed by middle-class progressives to domesticate the labor force. Industrial production required a concentrated labor force, but the swelling masses of workers in the capitals of Britain and Belgium, the industrial powerhouses of Europe, threatened urban order. At night, after factories had closed, workers and their families sheltered in the shadowy alleyways of Brussels and London. Reformers worked to alleviate the danger, dispersing the laborers and their families throughout the suburbs and the countryside. National governments subsidized rural housing construction and regulated workmen's trains to transport laborers nightly away from their urban work sites and to bring them back again in the mornings; municipalities built housing in the suburbs. On both sides of the Channel, respectable working families were removed from the rookeries and isolated from the marginally employed, planted out beyond the cities where they could live like, but not with, the middle classes. In Janet L. Polasky's urban history, comparisons of the two capitals are interwoven in the context of industrial Europe as a whole.Reforming Urban Laborsets urban planning against the backdrop of idealized rural images, links transportation and housing reform, investigates the relationship of middle-class reformers with industrial workers and their families, and explores the cooperation as well as the competition between government and the private sector in the struggle to control the built environment and its labor force.

A history of what it meant to be a man, and a citizen of an emerging nation throughout the nineteenth century. This book not only relates how Belgians were taught how to move and fight, but also how they spoke and sang to express masculinity and patriotism.

\"The panoramic story of Waterloo, from its causes to its aftermath, told through uniquely interwoven narratives drawn from the diaries, letters, reminiscences, and great novels of participants and witnesses. With Bonaparte's escape from Elba in February 1815, the world was jolted from the profound peace it had experienced for eleven months back into the frenzied panic of a war it believed had ended. David Crane captures the mixture of excitement and fear that gripped England in the final days of a war that opened up complex divisions in its society--from Liverpool merchants who celebrated the end of hostilities with America and stood allied against another war, to the children of the Romantic Age who felt torn between their own patriotism and a lingering hero-worship that no crime of Napoleon's could eradicate. And he gives us an unprecedented, revelatory hour-by-hour account of the day of the battle. Focusing as much upon the boys and men torn from their farms and flocks as on the aristocratic families who provided Wellington with his officers, Went the Day Well? is a remarkable portrait of an entire nation engaged in a battle that changed the history of our world\"-- Provided by publisher.

This study contributes to the understanding of these mechanisms by investigating the association between sibship size and height before, during, and after the fertility decline to test predictions based on the resource dilution hypothesis. The investigation is conducted using information from universal conscript inspections linked to a longitudinal demographic database. Regression analyses estimate a model derived from the resource dilution explanation and analyze the association between sibship size and height among men born in 1821-1950 in southern Sweden. The results show that the association between sibship size and height was negative from the mid-nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century. There is no association in the early nineteenth century. The strength of the association is gradually weakened over time for men born from the 1840s until the 1940s. It is most consistent among men born from 1881-1921, corresponding closely to the time for the fertility decline in the area. The association is not a result of confounding by observable demographic or socioeconomic differences between families.

This article examines the impact of information asymmetry on the movement of London–Antwerp exchange rates against the backdrop of the Great Debasement of 1544–51. The case of the revaluation of gold coins in the Habsburg Netherlands in 1539, about which the sovereign and the public possessed similar information, is used as the benchmark to judge how far the speed of adjustment was affected by information asymmetry. This article is also part of the recent literature that estimates the degree of financial market integration in late medieval and early modern Europe. In the framework of the threshold autoregressive model, the speed of adjustment and the transaction costs associated with arbitrage are estimated, and the results are judged using the speed of communication as a benchmark since the flow of information played a critical role in financial arbitrage. The results reveal that the sixteenth‐century London–Antwerp exchange markets were already as integrated as that during the late nineteenth century, but information asymmetry severely disturbed the effectiveness of exchange arbitrage.

Family composition and household dynamics, both in early and in later life, influence individual health and longevity. Both positive and negative effects can be expected in terms of sibling size and composition. On one hand, siblings compete with each other, which may lead to resource dilution and increased adult mortality risks. On the other hand, siblings protect and care for each other, which may have a positive impact on longevity. To investigate the way in which sibling composition (with respect to sibship size, sex, and birth order) in the family of orientation and the proximity of siblings in later life relates to adult mortality risks at ages 50+. Life courses of 258 men and 275 women from the Antwerp COR*-database were 'reconstructed' and analyzed by way of event history analysis using Gompertz shared frailty models. Being higher in birth order related to significantly higher mortality risk after age 50 for men. Having older brothers, particularly those present in later life, was associated with very high excess mortality risk for both sexes, though men were more strongly disadvantaged. Having (more) younger sisters present at RP (research person) age 50 was related to significantly lower relative mortality risk for women. Our findings highlight the complex relationships between sibling and gender dynamics and mortality risk in later life. Evidence of a lasting impact of sibling competition on mortality risk over age 50 is found; and competition is only replaced by solidarity in critical times (e.g., widowhood), wherein older sibling presence dissimilarly impacts different social groups.

Although the diffusion of fertility behavior between different social strata in historical communities has received considerable attention in recent studies, the relationship between the diffusion of fertility behavior and the diffusion of people (migration) during the nineteenth century remains largely underexplored. Evidence from population registers compiled in the Historical Database of the Liège Region, covering the period of 1812 to 1900, reveals that migrant couples in Sart, Belgium, from 1850 to 1874 and from 1875 to 1899 had a reduced risk of conception. The incorporation of geographical mobility, as well as the migrant status of both husbands and wives, into this fertility research sheds light not only on the spread of ideas and behaviors but also on the possible reasons why the ideas and behaviors of immigrants might have been similar to, or different from, those of a native-born population.

The decision to emigrate has historically held differing promises and costs for women and for men. Exploring theories of difference in labor market participation, network formation and the immigrant organising process, on belonging and diaspora, and a theory of ‘vulnerability,’ A Global History of Gender and Migration looks critically at two centuries of the migration experience from the perspectives of women and men separately and together. Uniquely investigating the subject globally over time, this book incorporates the history of migration in areas as far-flung as Yemen, Sudan, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Poland, the Soviet Union, the US, and the UK, an approach that allows for patterns to emerge over time. A Global History of Gender and Migration further shows that although there are various points on which migrant men and women differ, and several theories exist to explain these differences, this comprehensive guide offers a unifying thesis on the theories and practice of migration, adding to our insight into the mechanisms underlying the creation of differences between migrant men and women. Marlou Schrover is an Associate Professor of Social History at Leiden University. She has published twelve books and over 60 articles, in recent years mostly on migration. Her latest publications include Illegal Migration and Gender in a Global and Historical Perspective (Amsterdam 2008) (with Joanne van der Leun, Leo Lucassen and Chris Quispel) and Komen en Gaan. Inmmigratie en Emigratie in Nederland vanaf 1550 (Amsterdam 2008) with Herman Obdeijn. She is currently leading a large (NWO VICI) research project on gender and migration. Eileen Janes Yeo is Professor Emeritus of Social and Cultural History at the University of Strathclyde, where she was Director of the Centre in Gender Studies and active in creating a Scottish Migration Archives Network bringing together academics, arts professionals and community activists. Her extensive publications include The Contest for Social Science. Relations and Representations of Gender and Class (London, 1996); (ed.), Radical Femininity: Women’s Self-Representation in the Public Sphere (Manchester, 1998) and (co-ed.), Gender in Scottish History since 1700 (Edinburgh, 2006). 1. Introduction: Moving the Focus to the Public Sphere. Marlou Schrover and Eileen Janes Yeo. 2. Gender and Homeland in the Irish and Jewish Diasporas, 1850-1930. Eileen Janes Yeo. 3. Men and Women in Paris, 1870-1930. Leslie Page Moch. 4. Polish Liberators and Ostarbeiterinnen in Belgium During the Cold War: Mixed Marriages and their Differences for Immigrant Men and Women. Machteld Venken. 5. Why Make a Difference? Migration Policy and Making Differences Between Migrant Men and Women (The Netherlands 1945-2005). Marlou Schrover. 6. Children’s Citizenship, Motherhood and the Nation State. Betty de Hart. 7. Gendered Migrations and the Globalisation of Social Reproduction and Care: New Dialogues and Directions. Eleonore Kofman. 8. About Cleanliness, Closeness and Reliability: Somali and Ethiopian Domestic Workers in Yemen. Marina de Regt. 9. Where are the Girls? War, Displacement and the Notion of Home Among Sudanese Refugee Children. Lynette A. Jackson. Contributors. References. Index.